The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir

by Griffin Dunne

Years later, Frederick moved to Los Angeles to teach acting, and we lost touch until one night he called me in New York to say he was dying of AIDS. I wept uncontrollably. As he consoled me, instead of the other way around, I heard yelling and chaos on his side of the call and asked where he was. Frederick said he was in an AIDS ward of the county hospital as simply as if he were at our old table at Joe Allen’s again, probably just to comfort me. His SAG insurance had long run out because he hadn’t worked in years, a curse put on many of the actors in Boys for playing gay men too convincingly. When we hung up, I next called the production manager of a movie I was producing called White Palace. We were days from shooting in St. Louis, and we hired Frederick (on paper) for a nonexistent part that would work long enough for his SAG insurance to kick in. The next day he was moved into his home in the care of a hospice nurse, who took care of him until he died. I have not forgotten how a five-minute phone call and ten minutes’ worth of paperwork can change the remainder of a man’s life. Of the original cast of The Boys in the Band, five out of the nine actors died of AIDS-related causes.